On Oregon coastal rocky shores, filter‐feeders were relatively abundant and macrophytes were relatively scarce at Strawberry Hill, whereas opposite abundance patterns occurred at Boiler Bay. To determine whether nearshore oceanographic differences were associated with these patterns, we made shore‐based measurements of nutrient and Chl a concentrations. We used a three‐level...
Insight into the dependence of benthic communities on biological and physical processes in nearshore pelagic environments, long considered a ``black box,'' has eluded ecologists. In rocky intertidal communities at Oregon coastal sites 80 km apart, differences in abundance of sessile invertebrates, herbivores, carnivores, and macrophytes in the low zone were...
Velocity measurements from 17 deployments of moored acoustic Doppler current
profilers obtained during four summer upwelling seasons are used to describe the crossshelf
divergence of Ekman transport in the inner shelf off Oregon. For each deployment
the measured surface and bottom cross-shelf transports were compared with estimates
of the theoretical...
Wind-driven coastal ocean upwelling supplies nutrients to the
euphotic zone near the coast. Nutrients fuel the growth of phytoplankton,
the base of a very productive coastal marine ecosystem
[Pauly D, Christensen V (1995) Nature 374:255–257]. Because
nutrient supply and phytoplankton biomass in shelf waters are
highly sensitive to variation in...
Through bottom–up inputs and larval transport, benthic–pelagic links can have an important effect on benthic community structure. Recent work on community structure of northeast Pacific rocky shores has focused on latitudinal differences in recruitment of intertidal invertebrates as a driver of variation in community structure. Recruitment differences are associated with...
Filter-feeding invertebrates consume phytoplankton and detritus and therefore serve as important mediators of the exchange of materials from nearshore pelagic to intertidal benthic ecosystems. Here, we evaluated the linkages between nearshore and intertidal systems on temperate rocky reefs on the coasts of Oregon, USA, and New Zealand’s South Island. We...
Organisms eating each other are only one of many types of well documented and important interactions among species. Other such types include habitat modification, predator interference and facilitation. However, ecological network research has been typically limited to either pure food webs or to networks of only a few (<3) interaction...
Hypoxia is increasing in coastal zones worldwide, with acute effects on demersal fish and benthic invertebrate communities in shallow coastal and estuarine habitats. Less studied are the effects of hypoxia on planktonic larvae of open coastal habitats. Climate change projections suggest intensified hypoxia in open coast upwelling systems, such as...
The intermittent upwelling hypothesis (IUH) predicts that the strength of
ecological subsidies, organismal growth responses, and species interactions will vary
unimodally along a gradient of upwelling from persistent downwelling to persistent upwelling,
with maximal levels at an intermediate or ‘‘intermittent’’ state of upwelling. To test this model,
we employed the...
The proliferation of efficient fishing practices has promoted the depletion of
commercial stocks around the world and caused significant collateral damage to marine
habitats. Recent empirical studies have shown that marine reserves can play an important role
in reversing these effects. Equilibrium metapopulation models predict that networks of marine
reserves...